Archbishop's gay comments 'threat to young'

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Maori researchers are accusing the Anglican Church's new head, Archbishop Whakahuihui Vercoe, of endangering young people for calling for a world without gays.

The head of a Maori sexuality research project at Auckland University, Clive Aspin, said yesterday that struggles in coming to terms with sexuality were a significant factor in a high suicide rate among young men.

Dr Aspin said comments such as those by Archbishop Vercoe, who was quoted in the Herald as saying that homosexuality was not morally right, threatened long-term and permanent damage to youngsters grappling with their sexuality.

Early research findings from interviews with more than 70 people of all ages showed Maori had always had an open and embracing attitude towards sexual diversity within social networks.

Project researcher Leonie Pihama also rejected a claim by Richard Randerson, Dean of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell, that most Maori would probably find homosexuality culturally very difficult.

"Such statements are colonial and Victorian views that merely seek to oppress certain sectors of society and have no basis in tikanga Maori," Dr Pihama said.

"As far as we can see, there is no cultural basis for a hatred of a group of people in the community."

Archbishop Vercoe denies condemning homosexuals as individuals, saying he loves them as people despite believing their practices unnatural.

He told the Herald last night that he stood by what were personal comments, and believed he had a right as a church leader to make them.

"If you find it difficult you shouldn't lead anything, you should stay home and close your door," he said. "Everybody else has their personal right to say what they believe, but once people like me who are traditionalists make a statement, it suddenly becomes hot news.

"There is a lot of leadership in the world today that is contradictory - we say it is not right to kill people but still have leaders who tell us it is normal."

But Dr Pihama decried the primate's vision of a world without gays as "holocaustic".

Maori author Witi Ihimaera, who is gay, said he was extremely saddened by Archbishop Vercoe's views. "They were the sort of comments I would have expected to hear coming out of Noah's waka, and not from the head of the Anglican Church in New Zealand.

"I would really call for his resignation because he needs to get pastoral advice - his comments are very, very punitive, they are very patriarchal, very homophobic and very sexist."

Ihimaera was equally outraged at a statement by the archbishop that the time was not right for him to ordain a Maori woman as a bishop, even though New Zealand has had a Pakeha Anglican woman bishop since 1990.

"Maori women have suffered double discrimination from Pakeha and to hear they are also suffering the same double discrimination from a Maori, from, in fact, the head of the Anglican Church, is very worrying."

The Right Rev Dr Penny Jamieson, the Anglican Bishop of Dunedin and the first woman in the world to lead a diocese, would not be drawn on the archbishop's views.

"I cannot see what the issue is. He is talking about his culture and he is very knowledgeable about it - I have no problem with that."

But an Auckland University theological lecturer and Anglican priest, the Rev Dr Philip Culbertson, said he believed the archbishop's comments were a breach of a prohibition by the church's ruling Lambeth Conference against homophobic statements.

He said they did not represent the position of the Anglican Church, which had left the issue of homosexuality unresolved, and were potentially divisive in being "so offensive to so many people in the church".

Anglican Maori leader Professor Whatarangi Winiata defended the archbishop's right to make such comments, although he disagreed that homosexuality was morally wrong.

Additional reporting: Rosaleen Macbrayne